Once an Airman....

If anyone is interested, here are a few thoughts on some of the places I spent time working at over the years….

840SU RAF Siggiewi (Malta) (Sep 1959 to Feb 1960). Posted into Systems Control as a junior shift worker, the RAF soon moved me across to the remote HF transmitter site at Benghaisa where I worked with such exotica equipment such as the SWB8 transmitters of WWII vintage. Not to mention the ‘Gough Switch’ a fiendishly dangerous antenna switching system that needed great care if one was to avoid harming yourself, the equipment or, as happened whilst I was there, frying an unsuspecting tech working on the antenna farm (we called it the aerial farm in those days)and causing his death by the fall from height.
RAF Luqa (Malta) (Feb 1960 to Mar 1962). Someone then found out that not only could I spell ‘UHF’ I had actually got experience of it and so was moved from Benghaisa transmitters into the ground radio section at Luqa, which in those days was an international airport operated by the RAF. However, I retained contact with the SU world because I became the only person at Luqa cleared and trained on the ancient BID31 crypto (long since taken off the list of those things that one cannot speak of) and operated it twice weekly between Luqa and the UK.

OPERATION VANTAGE. In July 1961 Iraq threatened to invade Kuwait (as it did once again in 1991) which triggered Op Vantage and massive movement of troops, ships and aircraft. The first I knew of it was being met on by return to my billet after a boozy night out in Luqa village to be confronted by 2 RAF plods who said “get in the vehicle, now”. Plods in those days from the perspective of a junior airman were people to be treated carefully and with caution. I asked what had I done to be carted of in this way and was told “you are holding up operations and the AOC, Army and Navy bosses have been awaiting your return for the past 4 hours”. I quickly sobered up on realising that I must be needed for a special handling patch (a secure end-to-end personal conference between senior officers) and also that I was the only person cleared to operate the BID31 equipment needed for a conference with the outside world. I arrived at the conference room with the 3 keys needed to open the steel door into the ‘back room’ and to do that had to pass through the assembled senior staff, dressed as I was in jeans and shirt and no doubt reeking of beer, trying to ignore the menacing glances of the AOC downwards, entered the back room and locked the door behind me. My boss called me on the phone and said you are to stay there until we can get someone out from the UK to help out, so there I stayed for the next 24 hours being fed sandwiches and tea sent across by my boss. Another guy came out from the UK the next day, so we worked 24 on 24 off between us for a week and then it all settled down and I went back to work at the ATC tower. I doubt that there has ever been another occasion on which a lowly SAC ground wireless mechanic held up the start of a military operation in Malta (or elsewhere come to that) or have kept the Army, Navy and RAF commanders hanging around until such times as it was convenient for said SAC to return from the pub!

RAF Stoke Hammond (Nov 1963 to Sep 1964). This was an outstation of RAF Standbridge (Commcen Central), at that time the UK Master Systems Control Point (MSCP) for the Commonwealth Air Forces Network (CAFNET) long-haul HF communications circuits. Stoke Hammond was the “Red” receiver and the “Yellow” receiver site was with the Army at Bampton Camp. Many long-haul circuits in those days were Frequency shift keying (FST) to places like Delhi, Colombo and Singapore, with patches onto many other locations.

RAF EASTLEIGH (Kenya) (Sep 1964 to Sep 1966). I worked at a small, self-contained station about 12 miles north of Nairobi (where I lived with my family) and way out in the bush called RAF KAHAWA. This was another CAFNET HF Receiver site linked back to Nairobi. We had a huge antenna farm and theft of copper cables was a continual problem, partly resolved by letting a pack of large and angry dogs out of the gate on the evenings we suspected thieving activity might be going on. Being a self-contained site we had our own chef and a couple of plods and I remember the plods and dogs one dark night arresting 3 thieves on the antenna farm and bringing them back to the tiny guard hut. They called the Kenya police, who quickly turned up and without any explanation or warning beat the 3 thieves to the ground and slung them into the back of their truck. We never heard another thing about it. I was there when the Rhodesia oil crisis occurred and the Biera ship blockade was set up. No one told us that Rhodesia was not supposed to any longer be a part of the CAFNET and so we continued to communicate with them in the usual way. Until someone higher up the food chain found out…. Our much larger sister transmitter site was further north of us at RUIRU, later used by the British army and, I believe, is still in use. I was there when Kahawa was formally closed and handed to the KAF, but only after we had stripped the site of all equipment so quite what the KAF got out of it I know not…..

HMS JUFAIR (Bahrain) (20 Jul 1968 to 4 Aug 1969). This was a joint-service Comcen and SCP wherein I worked for 13 months as a Systems Control shift supervisor. This was at the bottom of a solar circle and maintaining HF circuit availability (by now they were no longer called CAFNET but DCN circuits) was often extremely difficult – especially to Masirah which I often had to try to engineer via a standby Morse circuit – that often being the only way of talking with Masirah. Thus I learned Morse whilst there which came in useful when decades later obtaining a UK amateur radio licence.

9 ANZUK SIGNALS REGIMENT (Singapore) (Nov 1972 to Aug 1974). Not that long after the UK withdrawal from the far east, instability in the area led to the formation of the Australian, New Zealand and UK (ANZUK) force, which of course needed its own communications facilities. And so, using a large range of outdated teleprinters, channelling and other equipment scrounged from the scrapyards of 3 nations, a commcen and SCP was set up in Force HQ where before the pullout jad been known as “HMS Terror” – a concrete battleship. I started off as a Syscon shift controller but soon became IC systems maintenance which, bearing in mind the diverse range of dubious quality communications equipment was, shall I say, a challenge at the best of times…

889 SU (Singapore) (Sep 1974 to May 1975) But soon “they” decided to cancel ANZUK force and yet another withdrawal, this time by all 3 nations started. Naturally communications had to be maintained and lo and behold, thus sprang into being 889 Signals Unit, where I spent the remainder of my tour doing the same thing but with ever-dwindling numbers around me. I was always convinced 889 was chosen as the number for this new signals unit because 88.9MHz was the frequency of the BFBS station in Singapore. ANZUK force, by the way, consisted of males and females of the army, navy and air forces of 3nations, which as you can imagine led to some interesting misunderstanding as to ranks and authority. For example, during much of my time there the absolute ruler of all was an Australian infantry RSM, with a twitch gained through having been in action in Vietnam…..

81 SU (South) RAF Bampton Castle (Dec 1975 to Aug 1980). When posted into Bampton Castle the installation of the brand new Strike Command Integrated Communications System (STCICS) hadn’t been completed. So I and the others who were going to be responsible for all engineering aspects of the new system were sent on a training course to RAF Locking. There, we discovered that not only did we not know much about the new systems, neither did anyone at RAF Locking. I am not joking when I say that training on some elements of the system consisted of being shown a photograph or drawing of what they thought it was going to look like. But we stuck through it and retained sanity by playing a lot of 5 a side football in the evenings for hours on end so as to burn off resentment at the lack of training. I spent a lot of time working on my own in the evenings trying to make sense of how it all fitted together and eventually produced a master overall system drawing, which eventually became a part of the formal training syllabus. Bampton Castle was the southern SCP for STCICS, the northern one being at HMS Forest Moor. Our transmitter site was at RAF Chelveston, theirs at Milltown and exchange visits became something of a regular feature. I remember before we became operational taking part in a ground to air comms test and since I was responsible for the engineering ops side of things, looked at the plan and told anyone who would listen that it wasn’t going to work, because the frequency prediction the experts had produced took no account of the fact that the aircraft was a moving platform using entirely different type of antenna and power. I calculated the frequencies given as being about 4MHz too low and thus it turned out – not because I cleverer than the experts, by this time I had decades of HF frequency management experience to fall back on. Eventually all settled down, all was installed and working and life became pretty much routine – so much so in fact that I was able to find enough time to pretty well manage a nearby RAF Gliding club at which I flew whenever possible….

2SU Detachment RAF Edlesborough (Nov 1981 to Aug 1983). This was a highlight of my time up to then – a huge HF transmitter site of which I was the boss and 22+ NCOs and staff to do all the running around. Edlesborough was a remote site (as was the other transmitter site RAF Greatworth) under the control of 2SU RAF Stanbridge, at that time still the master DCN SCP. Many a tale I could recount of my time there, including the time a rigger contractor went by Bosun chair up an antenna the foreman had assured him was not connected to a transmitter, until finding that his rubber suit caught fire every time he was swung by the wind into the feeder that the foreman had cocked up his site map. Or like, getting a semi-whispered ‘phone call at the start of the Falkland Islands war from a MoD RN officer who asked me if I had an antenna pointing in a certain direction. Which certain direction I enquired? You know where, said he. I guessed I knew what he wanted so I said I do have a Rhombic pointing very close to where I think you mean (its shoot had been to Gibraltar before the circuit was closed), but it is not connected and will need a fitting party to erect a dozen poles and run in some new open wire feeder; we can do the rest. That call was on a Friday and by Saturday afternoon it was on the air, never seen contractors move so fast, before or since…

RAFSEE Henlow (Aug 1983 to Jun 1985). I was moved from RAF Edlesborough (with my agreement) to the RAF Signals Engineering Establishment (RAFSEE) to work in uniform as a system designer to help a project which had fallen way behind at RAFSEE, who claimed it could not be done unless the RAF provided some support. So I became DES RAD CTS2A and hence a design authority working on the design and development of a fairly complex new SCP for RAF Bampton Castle, which was planned to take over from RAF Stanbridge in 1985. A driving factor behind the need to get the Bampton Castle SCP into being was that the MoD had agreed to the sale of RAF Hendon and the people there were to move into RAF Stanbridge. So the SCP had to move on time or the MoD budget plans would be busted right out of shape. Incidentally, the ‘Castle’ was added to Bampton because snail-mail often went to RAF Brampton, and they were getting annoyed with it all. So I worked at developing the design of the new system, much of the hardware was being built in the Radio Engineering Unit (REU) RAF Henlow, so I worked closely with “the factory” helping them to sorting out a range of production and other problems such as drawing errors. In late 1984 I started to work more on site at Bampton Castle as the essential works services and some of the equipment got under way. I count (but won’t!) recount a lengthy list of problems, foreseen and unforeseen up to and beyond the point at which we started the master cut-over plan to transfer all of the Stanbridge circuits to Bampton Castle. From around May 1985 I effectively moved into Bampton Castle to work as the on-site designer able to authorise changes as and when needed to the installation drawings, in effect being the boss of the REU Henlow installation fitting parties. This worked pretty well and then came the day to start up the systems, check them out for full serviceability and then start the 'master plan' of transferring the lines from Stanbridge to Bampton Castle. It was a lengthy complex affair involving liaison by 'phone, fax, signal with just under an hundred other organisations, including BT who were key to the success of the plan. We started on time at 0800hrs on Monday the 17th of June 1985 and completed the plan 2 hours ahead of schedule at 1400hrs on Thursday 27th of June and at that point were declared as fully operational. And there I stayed until June 1985 as IC systems engineering operations. And then onto yet another post..

Over the years, when not engaged with the above I served with the Tactical Comms Wing (through it changes of title) several times, at RAF Tangmere (where I alone was the only authorised aircraft marshaller (that's another story!) RAF Benson and RAF Brize Norton. One way and another I managed to get around a bit during my time in the RAF and one day might blog Ascension Island, the Falkland Islands, other places and the trials and tribulations of preparing the communications systems (more installation design work but this time as Technical Agent for HQ Strike Command) at RAF Coningsby for the introduction of the Typhoon into service. Wouldn’t have changed any of it for the world, but that’s another story….

SINGAPORE 1972-75

Singapore. A pleasant change from Bahrein, spending 2.5yrs in the far east, complete with my family (wife Jill, David and Lindsey). This poor quality picture is of me about to take a winch launch into the wild blue yonder in a rather old glider with pretty low performance in the glide. But, it got us airborne......











This one is of me standing in the rear door of a RNZAF Bristol Freighter that we managed to 'borrow' from the squadron then resident at Tengah. The nose of the aircraft you can see inside the Freighter is an Indian-built 'Rohini' glider which one of the members of the ANZUK GLiding Club had found lying in a hangar at Ipoh, Malaysia. We had negotiated to be given it but had no way of getting it back to Singapore, until someone asked the RNZAF if they had anything going up that way. To cut a long story short, I flew up to Ipoh via Kuantan (vicious fighting there in WWII) and met the crew we had sent up by road, and after a bit ok juggling managed to get the very large and heavy glider tied down in the Freighter and we flew it back to SIngapore. Now, there were only two people on board the Freighter, me and the pilot so when I saw the RNZAF pilot chappie come down the stairs from the flight deck, I thought "hullo, so who is flying this kite?" As he passed by to the rear of the kite, pilot says casually "just going to tuhe loo - won't be but a few minutes". I got out of my seat and strolled casually to the stairs (rather quickly, actually) and shot up onto the flight deck to be confronted with an empty cabin and 'George', the auto-pilot in sole command of the aircraft. I checked the panel, saw that we were at 2,500 feet above endless jungle and looked for the auto-pilot disengage switch in case 'George' suddenly went mad - a not altogether unkown ocurrence in those days. And there I stayed until the real pilot reappeared..... SInce I was flying a lot in those days I wasn't frightened or even much concerned, just very, very cautious in trusting my life to a mindless machine which, although capable of flying the kite much better than a human being, could easily throw a sudden tantrum and dump us upside down into the jungle........


The Rohini hadn't flown for several years, so we carried out a pretty thorough inspection of everything, esepcially inside the laminar-flow wings before deciding that it was airworthy This picture is of Ray (barking-mad) Parkin, our inspiring Chief Flying Instructor taking a last few pictures before getting the kite airborne for the first time. We didn't use parachutes in those days but, for some strange reason Ray thought he ought to wear one for the air-test. It all went well, other than that we missed the bit in the Pilot's Notes for the kite where it said "be aware that deploying full spoilers restricts the rearward movement of the control column". Accordingly, when Ray tried to round out for landing with full spoilers he discovered that he couldn't pull back on the column far enough to round out.....
Happily, he got away with it, as did the Rohini. I only flew it a couple of times and didn't much like it. It was very heavy and for me, well over 6 feet tall, cramped. I much preferred the Slingsby Sedberg, Swallow, T31 and Tutor.

BAHREIN 1968-69

1968 found me stationed in Bahrein, working at the Joint Communications Centre with the Army and Navy communicators at HMS JUFAIR. In those days, despite the fact that my daughter was born a few months before my posting, it was to be a 13-month unaccompanied tour with a break in the UK half way through the tour.
The accommodation was seriously horrible - for the first few months I lived in the Army barracks, which were in so poor and unsafe a condition and with almost useless airconditioning that the verandahs were sealed off, being in danger of collapse. Soon I was moved into the Navy accommodation for while. That was OK, other than the fact that it was right under the junior ranks bar, where brawls and noise were more annoying than dangerous. The brawling usually broke out when the crews of the minesweepers came ashore after being at sea for a long time in fairly primitive conditions - booze as ever being the root of the problem.
Most of the civilian support staffs were Goanese and when they were provided with new and improved accommodation, the RAF took over their old buildings for our use. So I moved into what was once the Goanese kitchen; the airconditioning actually worked but the ceilings were painted reeds or something somilar from which the stink of cooking could not be eradicated.
We took our meals in the Navy mess and more or less got used to basic and sometimes horrible food - the worst being the eggs, all of which came from the Lebanon after being injected with some chemical to preserve them en route. They were truly, truly horrible things which few people ate.
And it came to pass that I struck up a friendship with some of the crew of the USS LUCE, which was on station then in the Gulf area. Now the US Navy eats well and so I joined them whenever I could and spent many an off-shift hour on board. The LUCE was a DLG-7 guided missile destroyer also fitted with, if memory serves, a 5.5" gun turret. Over the months I was shown all over the ship and one of the guys I met was the senior gunner, who asked me if I'd like to see the gun dry-fired. So I got settled in the firing seat and noted that the gun was pointed at the Sheik's palace a mile or so away and very pretty if looked, shining bright white in the sunshine. I was briefed on how the gun worked and the turret was powered up and I was told to push down on the firing pedal. I did so and the turret came alive with huge bits of machinery crashing to and fro. There were no shells or charges involved, of course, but the shell hoist, rammers, breech block etc were all thrashing around with a hell of a lot of noise, which I watched with interest, keeping the firing pedal down all the while.
Suddenly someone screamed "Stop!" "Stop!", so I let up the pedal and wondered what the panic was. It turned out that a safety man monitoring the shell hoist had spotted a live round going up the chain; by the time I stopped the dry-firing sequence it was only three away from being rammed into the breech. Had we not stopped, in the next 15 seconds or so the Sheik's palace would have taken a direct hit and, who knows, it might have altered the whole history of the Middle East? Believe it or believe it not - this really did happen.....

MALTA 1962 - the first Gulf War

Almost anyone asked "in which year did the first Gulf War with Iraq take place?" would say "1992 after Iraq invaded Kuwait". They'd be wrong - the first "war" was in July 1961 when Iraq threatened to invade Kuwait. Hardly anyone remembers that but, at the time, I was stationed at RAF LUQA in Malta where I worked in the ground wireless section in the Air Traffic Control tower. Out of the blue "OPERATION VANTAGE" was set going and the first I knew about it was when I returned to my billet from an evening in Papa Joe's "Friends Bar" in Luqa village. I was then on my first day off from shift and was consequently scruffy and pretty well oiled by the time I got back to my billet, to be confronted by two irritated RAF Police who said that they had been looking for me for the past three hours. They wouldn't say what they wanted me for, which worried me that some forgotten 'crime' had surfaced but they just rushed me into their Landrover and off we went..
As we sped around the airfield and passed the bomb dump, I realised that we were heading for the building wherein sat the secure communications equipment which, at that time, only I at RAF Luqa was authorised to operate on weekly tests of the crypto equipment to the UK - both to HQ Bomber Command and the MoD. On our arrival at the building, on entering the outer room I found myself being glared at by a crowd of very, very senior RAF and RN commanders who looked far from impressed at the late arrival of the scruffy and partly boozed junior airman upon whose pleasure they had been awaiting for urgent communications with the UK.
The most junior officer there was my flight commander (Flying Officer Fraser) who rushed me into the "back room" to the crypto equipment and urged me to get it going as soon as possible. Which I did and we watched with interest (strictly speaking, not allowed) the operation orders streaming into Malta. That went on for about three hours, during which time I was provided with coffee and sandwiches in the outer room by the Officers' Mess stewards until the tele-conference, all conducted via teleprinter, ended. I thought, "that's it, back to bed for me" but was told, "you are to stay here until relieved". I said "but there isn't anyone else at Luqa to relieve me." "Correct", said the high-priced help "so you will have to stay here until we get something sorted out".
And so, unwashed, by now sober and still attired in my scruffy jeans I remained at my post for the next 36 hours, having meals delivered as and when someone remembered to arrange it. My relief arrived off an aircraft from the UK in a state of some confusion, having been dragged out of his work somewhere and stuffed onto a plane for Malta and thereafter we worked 24hrs each turn and turn about until things returned to more like normal some two weeks later.
The background to the first Iraq 'war' can be summarised as follows: Following Iraqi claims on its oil-rich neighbour Kuwait, the threat of invasion prompted the ruler of Kuwait to request British military support. Between 1 and 6 July, 7,000 men and 720 tons of material were flown into the Persian Gulf area from airfields in the United Kingdom, Cyprus, Aden and Kenya. Two squadrons of RAF Hawker Hunter ground-attack aircraft were also despatched to Kuwait, English Electric Canberra squadrons from RAF Germany were concentrated in the Persian Gulf, and aircraft from the 'V-force' were held at readiness in Malta. The operation successfully deterred any aggression, and British forces were gradually withdrawn.
From 1961 in Malta, we now roll forward to 1992 for the second Gulf War with Iraq, which found me serving at HQ No.1 Group as a communications systems engineer desk officer. Because my senior officers had all been pulled away into the conflict I found myself being responsible for attending the daily 'prayers' meeting to brief the Air Officer Commanding (AOC) on all aspects of the communications links. The run-up to each 'prayers' meeting was for all of the desk officers to gather to discuss events and decide on what the AOC should be briefed about. Quite early on signals were flying around about sending Jaguar fighters to Barhein, some saying Bahrein and others referring to Muharraq which I knew as being the same place.
A senior air operations officer - a Wing Commander who looked to me like 17 years old - asked the assembled desk officers "I am confused, we seem to be sending the same Jaguar aircraft by fin number to two different airfields - that is, Bahrein and Muhurraq" so does anyone know what's going on?" With much shuffling of feet amongst the assembly, no one wanting to expose either themselves or the Wing Commander as being ignorant, none spoke. Me, being unworried about such things said "Sir, they are the same place - the main airfield in Barhein is called Muhurraq and, when I was stationed there was called RAF Muhurraq - Oh, and by the way Sir, this is the second time I have been involved with going to war against Iraq, the first time being in July 1961 with Operation Vantage.
No one present had ever heard of it and I felt rather like a dinosaur but not yet quite dead......

KENYA Memories

Watching the tragedy unfolding in Kenya as a result of rigged elections reminds me of my time there, as I was stationed with the RAF in Kenya between 1964 and 1966 when the country became an independant nation. Independance day found my wife (Jill) and I living in a flat in the Parklands area of Nairobi and we went into the city to watch the events as they happened. I still have a faded copy of the "East African Standard" newsaper published on independance day, somewhere in the loft.
I remember the shouts of "Uhuru" and "Jamhuri" being heard everywhere - Swahili for freedom and independance. At that time many of the locals seemed to think that Jomo Kenyatta, the first President, would be giving each of them a house and a car, though I suspect that this was largely as a result of what we now call spin on the part of the politicians. Tom Mboya was expected to become a very high-flyer in the new goverment - he was a nice and very able politician but there was also another named Odinga Odinga, whom we nick-named as '007'. Tom was murdered in the doorway of a shop I used to use in Nairobi and throughout the time I was in Kenya, '007', being basically a Marxist, caused a lot of political problems.
Looking at the TV pictures of slums and shanty towns in Kenya, it seems to me that not much has changed since 1964 because back then there were areas of Nariobi 'out of bounds' to the RAF, especially the slums like in the inappropriately named part of Nairobi known as 'Jerusalem'. I worked at a small but secure remote communications site out in the bush, accessed by a single track which also led towards Jomo Kenyatta's farm and more than once I had to get off the track to avoid conflict with his convoy.
We handed over all of the RAF assets to the Kenya Air Force in 1966 and departed for home, taking in those times almost 3 days travel by air in a Britannia aircraft, making stops along the way and getting stuck at Paris because of widespread fog in the UK. I have never returned to Kenya but am sad (though not entirely surprised) to see what is happening there right now.....

RAF Cosford 1957

This is where it all started - RAF Cosford in 1956 and this is me in 1957, having got well used to wearing a hairy uniform. Not that I have sorted out what I might do with a blog, best that I start diggin into my memory banks! For the record - I was part of the 29th Boy Entrant entry at RAF Cosford where I was trained (and damned well compared with modern training systems) for 18 months to become a Ground Wireless Mechanic (Command). Which meant my training covered airfield communications, receivers, transmitters, power generators and heaven knows what else.